Advent Children
by Coronis
Summary: Why should death be the end for Jenova? The hunt has begun, in more sense than one.
1. Just Another Scar

Advent Children  
  
"The problems arose when I started seeing him in mirrors, over my shoulder, when he wasn't there at all. I began to resemble him, in my sleep I became more and more like him, every night I'd notice another similarity. They could tell, everyone could. You could."   
  
His sweat-damp hands shook a little. Then a little more.  
"I never met him". I lied.  
"You've met me".  
"I don't regret that".  
"He will". My companion's symmetrical cheekbones flushed, his lips slack. He was another typically sickening example of everything I survived. Crumpled from having been slept in, his perfectly tailored midnight blue suit clung about him timidly, stretched in places by the pressure of a tense muscle beneath.  
  
I raised the 1911 slowly, purposefully. The hammer fell and the bullet sprang from the chamber, spinning as it flew. It has always been my trademark to modify my projectiles, product of expert training and more than equal boredom. A dum-dum bullet is a regular hollowpoint cartridge, with an X cut into the tip so that the charge will explode on impact. Very painful.  
  
"Rocha, you are nothing like him. For one thing, you're dead".  
  
I felt like kissing him before I left. There's my thought, exact, unflinching and slightly perverted. I didn't touch his skin, it would have been colder than I'd like. Instead I took the lighter from his top pocket and left him mine, not that he would get much use out of it. Fucking Turk.  
  
* * * * *  
  
You are not my dream. And yet you haunt my nights, gently pushing inward and then retreating to begin again, as though I desired to become one with you. Not one, more half of one, a distinct being and still a part of you. I loved you, I suppose. It's the kind of love you had for Rocha, and you knew it could be nothing more. You're ugly, you know. Inside. Like me. Mine is a sickness and yours a choice, the mother of every cathartic compulsion. So maybe I could have healed you. I won't tell them of this strange connection, the words of which are barely worth hearing. This is truth, undiluted and a waste of all that makes it real. Just another scar, you're just another tear I'll never shed, another bullet marked for an angel I can't find. I love you still. Goodnight.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I hurled the lighter onto a polished desk, different from the one in his office last week. Usually he gets a new desk when he's killed someone on its predecessor. Must've been a woman, he's changed the carpet too.  
"Who was it this time?"  
"How the fuck should I know?" I slumped in the chair opposite him, reaching for the cigarette case next to a framed picture of his wife. Tolerant, accepting little Shera. I almost made it before he took hold of my hand. I know what he's looking for, and he won't find it. I was not a reject like that dead boy.  
"You done?" I pulled my hand in shortly after claiming my prize. He lit it for me. I leaned back gracelessly and let his priceless chandelier blind me. I wonder what he did for that. Or who he did.  
"Do you even have a name?" It's question after frigging question today. My head feels like there's a smackhead with a jackhammer in it and I haven't been laid for weeks.  
"Emil Rocha". Reeve smiled. I hate that smile. Well, I would if I had the energy. If I had that much energy I would probably shoot him. They say you should always fire on an exhalation. Relaxes you, I guess. Or makes it easier to accept that you are the reason why a human being is about to die.  
"Good. We should get his body some time today". He took the cigarette out of my mouth, dragged on it and offered it back. I stubbed it out on the back of my hand and flicked it at him. Obsidian eyes glittered, hovering parallel in a plume of smoke.  
"Hojo was good to you"  
"Damn right" I stood, satisfied that I had fulfilled my purpose. My commander shuffled through the stacks of yellowing documents in front of him, hopefully looking for the one I just stole. I knew his eyes were burning into my back as I walked out. I haven't been this close to laughing since I was a Turk myself. 


	2. Origin

Killing all of them will take time. Patience. Not among my multitude of virtues. They aren't all dead. Divided maybe, but not extinguished. The greatest height from which a person has fallen without mortal injury is 3300 feet. Gaea's cliff is half that. The swipe from a demi-god's Masamune would have been healed by the Mako when they hit the walls of the crater. I hope none of them rolled down the slope, cause I sure ain't keen on the idea of hauling their asses out and killing them. It might be Strife's definition of a good time, but then he is the one who pretended he was a SOLDIER Lieutenant so he could sleep with a slum bartender. And that freak Valentine.  
Not all the experiments were failures. Hojo was particularly proud of me. I don't feel anything when I think of what he did to me, and to my mother. Perhaps he engineered me that way. I doubt that; I think at some stage, be it due to my making a career out of my talent for murder or the manner in which I was raised, through glass screens and fed with syringes, I just quit feeling to save myself. Don't pity me, I feel no pity for myself, and nothing but interest for those I kill and the money it brings me. I was born in a tube on the peak of Mt. Nibel, infused with the powers of fire and stealth. I was the only survivor of a batch of fifteen. Hojo reasoned that I had been the strongest sample, feeding from my siblings and killing them as I grew. He tried different kinds of Mako afterwards, but having placed so little faith in the concoction that spawned me he was unable to reproduce it. His studies moved into the Shinra mansion before returning to Midgar on the new President's orders. He could never equal Gast, and that still pisses him off. Creating Sephiroth, myself and all Rocha's brothers was merely a posthumous bid for supremacy, to placate his sick compulsion. Why he got off on locking people in coffins I don't know. He should've just shot Vincent again and done the job properly, freaking scientists can't ever make a clean job of it. But I guess he learned his lesson when he shot me. His sons aren't easily killed.  
  
* * * * *  
  
"Here ya go honey, enjoy it", the waitress chirped, then buggered off again. Enjoy this. Yeah. Watch me. It might be coffee, it wasn't anything remotely like coffee last time but miracles do happen. So, this is my life. Since the Lifestream hit there's just a fucking asshole in the ground where Midgar was, all the action pretty much flooded into Nibelheim and Kalm and shows no signs of abating. There are plans and schematics drawn up for two new cities, lying somewhere in Reeve's office. Fuck knows why he took over after Rufus bit the big one. I guess because he had the presence of mind to survive the apocalypse, making him the most senior Shinra executive, hence also the least qualified for the post.  
"Jesus, you look even happier than usual". Macon Rude pulled up a chair opposite me and laid his brimming mug down on the table. The liquid inside didn't even vibrate.  
"Of course I'm happy. Who wouldn't be in my situation?" He shook his head and got almost half way to a smile before remembering why he'd come. They must be paying him well for what they've got him doing. There's no amount of money on the Planet that would make me do that for a living. I think I'm the only Turk to ever be promoted. Or demoted, I'm not sure which you'd call my current mission. I wonder what will happen when it's over. If it ever does end.  
"Yeah, I see your point. So we heard you got Rocha". News travels fast in the loyal ranks.  
"You heard right. No sense lying about it". I took a gulp of the whatever-it-was. Hot, bitter, still not quite delivering the caffeine hit I paid for. Might be chicory syrup and paint thinners. Yum.  
"I got his body after lunch", Rude drank slowly, searching the far reaches of the dark ocean for what he should say next, "He didn't have a tattoo". I leaned forward and ran my hands through my hair, sighing under the weight of my chosen profession. Hell, I don't have one either, it doesn't mean anything. It just means he was a lab rat and not a clone. My old friend's gaze dragged my eyes up from my palms to meet his. Tell me he was a clone, Rude.  
"Don't worry. He was manipulated with Mako, and it clearly bears that fuckhead Hojo's hallmark. If you hadn't done him he would have done you, and many more. He was about to snap, his brain activity was, like, somewhere up here, you know?"   
  
He indicated to a spot above his head, his eyebrows rising over the rims of his reflective shades for effect. I almost wanted to thank him for something I already knew. When you don't know who or what you are, though, it becomes somewhat difficult to trust what is evidently 'fact'. The way we talk has not changed, and I doubt it ever will. Since we used to do field assignments together, and make bets over whether Elena would ever get the whole suicide thing right.  
"Yeah. You know best, you did the autopsy", he nodded respectfully at my acknowledgement of his role in this whole ghastly affair, "So we know who's next?"  
Rude swept a hand across the smooth surface of his hairless head, throwing it upward in mock despair.  
"You will before I do", he sighed. Funny how the roles have been reversed, now his income depends solely on my leftovers.  
"Gotcha. Well, it's been fun, but I've got shit to do", I left enough cash to cover both drinks and turned to leave.  
"I'll bet you do. Oh, and Reno", I grinned, sure in the knowledge of what I was about to hear, "Buy yourself a decent suit, you're a Knight of Neo-Midgar for fuck's sake". Rude smiled back, raising his coffee in a farewell salute. I left with a slight spring in my step, into the cool windswept streets of a remote mining town, now a sprawling metropolis of overcrowded shacks. 


	3. No Bullshit

"Jenova…." I forced my eyes open, to obscure memories of another nightmare. The clock read 10.35 a.m. I've never adhered to office hours, and now I can rise and shine whenever I see fit. I get a deadline to kill someone by and I follow it. With seconds to spare.  
"Yuffie! You gonna get the mail or what?" She did. Wutaiian bitches always make the most loyal companions, and my greyhound is no different. With an expectant glint in her eye, she dropped the heavy pile of envelopes at the foot of the bed. Final notice for the tenant down the hall, some bar tab the company hasn't paid for me yet, and…oh. Great. Reeve's personal Shinra postmark. That guy patents something new every day. His line of swimwear is plastered all over the billboard on the opposite block. Everyone discreetly neglected to mention the fact that, considering the average hourly rate he pays, not even Costa Del Sol residents can afford to sunbathe. I'm not even sure what I earn now. As a Turk it was fifty grand per mission, with one of those fucking unnecessary pension schemes. Like Turks live long enough to retire.  
Dare I open this? Yuffie cocked her head. Sod it. My thumb pulled up the flap at the rear of the envelope and dug a furrow along its length. I tipped the guts out onto the duvet. A single sheet of very expensive paper without watermark or header. Reeve's handwriting, practiced for long and arduous hours in the basement room of Jonathan Shinra's School for Boys, having character all its own and yet at the same time looking like every example of the written word I've ever seen. Not that I've ever seen these words before.  
  
Investigate disappearance: REUBEN, ZACHARY  
  
Born: Gongaga.   
  
Last Seen: Sector 5 Slum.   
  
Subject not terminated at Gaea's Cliff. When you find him, make it clean.  
  
No bullshit. Clean, in this business? Investigate disappearance means find the person, then make them disappear permanently. Another thinker, another human. Someone who is conscious and will recognise me as a threat to their life. Not a mindless ball of screaming sickle-cell insanity or a secretary who turned to acting to repopulate Nibelheim. That was a good job. Valentine joined me for that, saying that he'd like nothing more than to watch the frauds set alight, writhing in their own corrupt inferno. I gave him one of my bullets as a memento, to keep for that 'special' job. The one that just has to hurt, the one they will remember him for long after they rebuild the world. Tseng did his avant-garde nut over that exquisite ballet of blood and gasoline. Apparently I was only meant to kill four of them, the in-crowd that suggested the deceitful scheme. Oh well. No-one left alive to rat on me.  
  
So, where's Zach Reuben? It was about an hour before I managed to wake up properly, and even then I wished I hadn't. Lost in the smouldering symphony of times long past, I watched clouds pour and burn behind my eyes, forming shapes I couldn't hold in focus long enough to question. I guess I'm as bad as Reeve is in that respect. If my target was last seen in Sector 5 then that's probably where I ought to start. I never decided whether I hate this part of an operation or not. After all, project Emanuel has been up and running over a year, this part of the operation has come around quite a few times. If I try to envision how many people are on the payroll for this ongoing façade I'll go insane for sure. I fed Yuffie and myself without breaking that thought.  
  
Not as much activity here as usual, only a few wandering homeless digging through the trash that used to be the Sister Ray. Fucking stupid name for a gun if you ask me. Then again, nobody did. I was too busy debugging the Gelnika, or at least stalling Strife before he found the weapon we knew all along would never stop Sephiroth. Hades, the only Summon materia that was never spliced with quasi-human DNA and called a clone. I backed into an alley and sighed, pushing my weight against a cool wet wall. It's too dark to tell what the wall is wet with.  
To bless a prosthetic human with a not entirely supernatural advantage over the next candidate, a particular materia is incubated with it, lending more than discreet mutations to the subject. Attributes like increased strength from a high magic like Ultima. I think that's what they used on Strife. They haven't used it since him. I know mine was a Summon. I think. But the rest of my batch had fire, lending credence to the theory that I absorbed their life force before it had begun to form. My hair is pretty hard to miss. I wonder if it was Ifrit, and that the others just died, my survival being due to some infinite coincidence. Very fucking likely. I was a killer before I could crawl, and that's the way it is. I grinned then at the idea that I might still be a killer long after I lose or forget the ability to walk, pointing my useless old Shinra-issue cattle prod at perspective enemies from the towering magnificence of my rusting wheelchair. Which gets at me the most, I wonder, the image itself, in all its cobwebbed majesty, or the fact that it's probably true. 


	4. Conflict

This is no longer my territory, but the passing eons have done little to change it. Unashamedly dank and rotting it stands the test of life, like so many of the places I ran headlong into rather than stay another day with Hojo. A single-decker bus yields the only light, oil-lamps flaring behind smoked glass, chasing the sprinting shadows. One shadow, I'm sure, it moved fast….. darting swiftly for whatever cover it could find. I don't judge this place, or any of its kind. These locales, if you will, taught me all I know about becoming a ghost. And consequentially, how to catch one. It had to be a man, the way the nothingness gripped it tight, calling out in shapes not unlike a shoulder, an arm, a readied knife. I took a step back and watched it slink away, into a murky shaft, a metal recess in a crumbling wall. My feet might have touched the festering ground twice, but no more than that before I was staring at the black ellipse as it swallowed the mordant shadow. Why am I following a nameless shape? I don't know…for the challenge, I guess. Or maybe because he moved like one of mine.  
  
I made the mistake of pressing my palm against the edge of the tube, balancing so that I might peer inside. Had I not noticed how precisely those edges had been manually refined I could have lost my hand, my own weight gently pushing muscle through the razor-sharp garrotte. I whispered some expression of pained surprise, and it was heard. A laugh chased it back at me. He's watching, the little motherfucker. Wherever he is. Probing for a place to land, I thrust my boot into the hole. Following it with the other, I found space to at least crouch until my vision acclimatised. I lurched forward onto my hands when a soft hovering thing blew cold, fetid air down the back of my neck. Cotton laundry, suspended from the curved ceiling on a six foot fishing wire, but not wet at all, and still stinking of fear and hot sweat.  
Darkness gradually fades, at first a single pixel of clarity in the murk and then hundreds. I saw a TV, a trophy shelf, even a couple of books. Beneath my feet was the submissive fabric of a well-used bed. It looked almost like home. Not mine, but somebody's, somebody who was not a clone all their life. Like I said, one of mine. Turned, poisoned, and finally succumbing to the fate I will continue to elude; being sent utterly fuckwitted by years of hearing and seeing more than your 'average' human being.  
"Fine, don't show yourself", I growled, more concerned with the framed snapshot gathering moss on the damp metal floor. It looked like a generic class photo, but I recognised every face. The Academy, we called it. The place where they train SOLDIER, and first-term Turks. I was there, at the back, next to Rude.   
A spiked flash of onyx hair obscured the faces around it. Reuben grinned from the centre of the front row. Goddamn glory hog, I remember him now. I sure won't mind killing him. Our unit would all meet after class or training exercises or whatever, and I was always the guy in the corner, face buried in coffee steam, making the occasional wisecrack before retreating back behind my hair and trying to get sober before Rude noticed. Rude is like a brother, in many ways, and we disliked a select few with fraternal consistency. Greatly admired, and rightly so, his physical prowess was unmatched, and for a beefcake he had a pretty good head on his shoulders. Shame I gotta lop it off for him.  
  
"You know me, don't you?" came the slow, exhausted voice, the mind behind it struggling to control the shake in its tone.  
"No. I remember you though."  
"Reno…." I know that voice. It's preaching at me, trying to dismiss my words. And it knows it will fail.  
"Zach"  
  
By the time I'd answered him there was a gun muzzle thrust at the spot I imagined his temple to be, inside his veil of cautious shade. I was spot on. He winced, cracked lips hauling themselves into a bitter grin. His was Titan, behemoth of earthly spheres, master of quake and landslide. The tectonic god belonged to him and he to it forever, the elemental ether branded on his skin as apparent as a tattoo to another of his kind. I hate him so, because he's beautiful. I wanted him so sincerely all those months at the Academy. I never told him, of course, and now he stands before me shivering despite the bundle of blankets hunched about his shoulders.  
  
Kill him. It is the kindest thing you can do.  
  
"Re-", he caught himself within the space of a withering cough and faced me, "Sinclair. Do it. I can't resist you like this"  
Even after all this time has passed he still thinks he can give the orders. Again he commanded me,  
"Do it"  
I never broke his gaze, unwilling or unable to stand down.  
"Fuck you. Disappear". I gestured toward the entrance of the tunnel with the limp 1911, as defiant as I've ever been.  
  
With that, he nodded lop-sidedly, so swiftly and imperceptibly that if I hadn't known his mannerisms by heart I would have missed it. He dived past me and out of the mouth of the iron beast he called home. I was becoming more and more convinced that this was just an out-of-commission sewage vent. But Reuben was long gone. Another reconnaissance mission complete, at least by Shinra standards. 


	5. Communion

You don't even hold material form now….are you incapable? No, it does not delight me as much as you would like to consider you flawed, invalid. It merely interests me because I know it can't be true. These courtships are so tiresome, so spineless a purgatory that sometimes I think I could end it for myself. Don't you need me, though? Almost as much as that small secret part of me clings to you? Indeed, this is the reality of my own universe, the paragon Reno V. Sinclair, and all that keeps it churning out new mornings is you. Here I am, nothing but a fragment of a broken corpse, distributed between fervent professionals. Take whatever you want, they always did. I know that for small doses of time I can believe I am the good guy, but when you come to claim what's yours I'll just have to let you.  
  
* * * * *  
  
It had been seven days since I saw Reuben when the matter of his whereabouts was raised. I answered honestly and noncommittally, sending Reeve into one of those downward spirals I love so dearly. It's too easy sometimes. He was not made for administration, but then neither was Rufus. Rufus, for all that transpired between us, was built to rule, to gain tyrannical power beneath the noses of his democratic citizens. All Reeve can do is suggest. He has all the money in this world, and then some, and a legion of soldiers under his command, but the superior commanders and field marshals of the five dominant armies? Jonathan Shinra's daughters. Nobody could have invented a better set-up. Militia en masse will obey themselves first and money second, Reeve would be lucky to scrape himself a tenth. The Turks though, are quite a different matter, as are the government's scientific units, loyal to the last and lavishing the new President with as much attention as he can handle. Probably because they'll need him if the armies ever decide to add pillaging to the daily drill. But they aren't completely truthful with him; I doubt that a guy who wore a six-foot furry moogle suit for two years straight would be privy to all the details of Hojo's little hobbies.   
  
One time, when I was eight, Hojo tried to 'examine' me after a catscan, the latter part being annual procedure and the former something quite different. I wasn't about to just let him, and that scalpel was the first thing my hand found. So after that little fiasco I lived with relatives, friends, johns…and rats…until Gast opened the school. I was in there like a shot, and there was a job waiting for me when I got out. The Professor, Gast of course, Hojo doesn't deserve that title; was dead when I got back from my first field assignment, but by then his greasy trained seal couldn't boot me off the payroll, his own activities having come under scrutiny. Such has been my career, I'm sorry to say, and hell knows where it's going. 


	6. Black and Violet

Never expect anything. Gast told me that. All I could count on from him was advice, though he gave me a great deal more, his advice was always the only certainty. Never expect favours from people, never expect your mark to die from one bullet wound, and never, ever expect your car to be empty if you left it that way. My ride is never locked, simply because nobody in this neighbourhood has the balls to steal it from me, and I, in my infinite wisdom, broke the central locking circuit while rerouting the power distribution cables. Meaning if I locked it I'd have to climb in through the trunk and manually pop all the locks from inside. The trunk of my car is not pleasant, considering the amount of corpses it has housed without cleaning. One of the first policies Reeve axed was courtesy valets, the self-important shit.   
  
The bundle was easily the same size as the front passenger seat it occupied, slumped against the dashboard amid swathes of black and violet fabric. Something greasy was dripping from the deep folds of rough cotton into the footwell, too dark to be anything of comforting ease to explain away. Rapping gently on the opposite pane of glass was enough to wake the pile of cold and bleeding rags, making it squirm and stir and recoil from the daylight. I realised then that I'd forgotten how much I hate living up on the plate, but it beat a three-hour train ride every morning. Sunlight, Mako millionaires, Shinra…the list was truly endless. But in my reverie I had digressed from the heap before me, and it seemed eager to remind me so. Clearly human, it fumbled with the door catch until the effort became too much and it abandoned its ministrations, still and fearful.   
  
My firefly eyes darted up and down the street, seeking out accomplices or threats of which there were none. Just a person stuck in my Shinra Spitfire. I couldn't leave him in there without an explanation at least, namely what in the hell did he think gave him the right to sit there bleeding in my car. With little recourse should I gain any form of an answer, I sat beside him in the driver's seat. The door closed behind me with a soft click, like a cough in shallow water.   
  
He turned before I did. I'm not sure why that was so important to me, but I couldn't look first. Perhaps I would have considered it defeat. These situations breathe silence into the air and birth colours somewhere inside my mind, smudged pictures and ethereal patterns written in sound. This picture, this masterful artwork rendered in steel and blood, turns as dark as his hair when the mask of sincerity is withdrawn. When the cape's hood falls to rest on his shoulders like so much heavily woven snow.   
  
Why here? Why now, when I let him run with such shameful chivalry? Part of me already knew, and the other could not ask. The blood had started out somewhere between his neck and lower abdomen, and was no doubt being emitted by a shallow surface wound. I can't say I was terribly enthusiastic about treating it for him. From this thought comes a memory, and I can see myself clawing at it from underneath a pane of swollen glass, not quite close enough but unwilling to desist before every bone in both my hands was crushed.   
  
"You can't stay here all day. Follow me."  
  
I exited as gracefully as one can from a Shinra sports sedan, and let my eyes trawl the sculpted body beneath its putrescent regalia. I want him even more now I have seen him so vulnerable. I feel no sympathy for him, and no desire whatsoever to exact vengeance on his part. I am in fact being paid handsomely to murder him. What bothers me is that if I am to provide the medical assistance he clearly needs, Zach will have to disrobe in my presence. I can't even think it. I hate him, I always will, and I thought nothing of him until his name was thrust into my world. And yet now I can think of nothing else. 


	7. Transgression

Reuben perched on the edge of my couch, gently probing the bandage pinned taut around his stunning torso with an inquisitive hand. The blankets were now officially Yuffie's department, to tear apart as she saw fit. Wearing only a pair of my cargo pants and casting me naught but the occasional glance from where he sat, Zach looked altogether unearthly. I struggled with the sight of my beautiful enemy, wondering if, at any point, it might be that he never had come here at all. The cause of his wound was not as yet clarified, as though I am fit to pass judgment. I smiled slightly, emotionless, at that concept.   
  
  
"Do you need to know? How this happened, I mean".  
  
  
As soon as the question issued forth from his flawless lips, Zach's eyes had realigned themselves with the floor. So light a brown as to appear golden, they became curiously fixated on everything they saw simultaneously, while seeming to look at nothing. A few odd mahogany specks glittered from the depths of each iris, dancing almost drunkenly, betraying their owner's brilliance. I laughed honestly, bitter and confused. Of course I know now. It cannot be possible, not under any plausible conditions anyway. Like any of those happen around here. Jenova. The thing that calls itself Jenova.   
  
  
"The - the monster....that escaped from the Headquarters...she...it...there were no legs, no lower half...same with the final-", he struggled with the word 'incarnation' for several seconds, "the final form of Sephiroth. They were...incomplete".  
  
  
I had not known about that. How would I? I was getting drunk in Wutai when Strife fought Sephiroth for the last time. Rufus told me that the Sephiroth hidden in Gaea's inner sanctum had wings where half his body ought to be. Regretting paying no mind to it now I paused before giving an answer, replaying to myself the unholy sight that day, tidal storms of liquid light and fearsome Weapons, the day the barrier came cascading down around us. No reply had formed as yet, my eyes flickering with silver sparks of recollection, drifting further down an inviting young throat.  
  
  
"They - you know that they are, then....the same being....the crisis from the sky disguised itself, as the final Sephiroth...and the other half is still -", his hand found the wound again and he winced but did not stop pressing it. There is no more effective anonymity than having the world believe you are dead. So half of Jenova is still watching.   
  
  
"Strife told me that a man was what stood in the way of the Lifestream". Granted that was the last thing he ever told me, but I will give nothing away. Strife looked me in the eye and told me he had cut out his brother's heart, that the blood of a man was what stained his hand. Not that of an abhorrent half-monster like the crisis from the sky. Zach's eyes shone at that, defiant and responsive.  
  
  
"Yes! A man- the human...Sephiroth...obeying the- the...", he broke off and breathed hard, as though air was in short supply. It certainly seemed that way. A wanton son obeying the thing he believed to be his mother. Not Sephiroth who became an impassive, incomplete demon and slept behind a wall of serous fire, but the military genius who was controlled by one. He was always...just a man.   
  
  
"So the final Sephiroth was the Jenova we had in HQ the whole time?", I raised an eyebrow, not really wanting to accept anything in case I discovered it to be false, but wanting to know every last word in case I suddenly found myself in the mood to do my job any time soon. I barely noted the fact that we knew that our captive abomination was only one half of a complete organism. We were hoping we had the only half that could think for itself, much the same wish that both Turk and scientist alike entertained when it came time to authorize the company budget every year. Reuben nodded, with a sheer fluidity I found rather alarming.  
  
  
"And the man that Cloud killed.....was the great General Sephiroth, its slave".  
  
***** 


	8. Nessun Maggior Dolore

I had not moved since Reuben first spoke; it felt as though I had hardly even blinked. The Shinra's finest marionette....the thing that pulled the strings.  
  
Fuck. What an Oedipus complex. He thought that our pet devil was his mother, and he followed it to his grave. Not denying it even possession of his own body when the Shinra disturbed their rest. And why should he not doubt his heredity? Because of the kind of upbringing he had, I imagine. Between Lucrecia's empty tomb and Hojo's.... well, and Hojo in general, I can hardly see a serene balance as is fitting for a superhuman child.   
  
"I see. You have to tell me how you know all this.", I fumbled around on the table I was leaning against for a cigarette, not wanting to disregard my charge for an instant, nor the magnitude of our conversation, one that was rapidly spinning out of its depth. Zach sighed. He seemed painfully young, almost naked and yet already exposed in so many ways. I was pretty sure my hard-on could have poked me in the eye by then, if I hadn't been fully dressed. And believe me I wished I wasn't, but sometimes sex does not end up being as much of a comfort as you intended.   
  
"But you don't have to tell me now", I gestured languidly at the black leather couch, implying, I hoped, that it was his for the night with nothing expected in return. Oh, Jesus….Zach….sweat…..leather….I'd better hit the sack. Alone.  
  
Undressing in silence I made careful inspection of the topography of scars that make my every expanse of skin a distinguishing feature. There is a definite system by which the cigarette burns on my arms arrange themselves, an arcane hierarchy they are unable to betray. It started subtly enough, but then what doesn't? One, then another and then a wave of incoherent malaise guides me through the upper layer of epidermal static and I find thirty. Pain and death have a great deal in common, as do death and sleep. Sleep. It would pretend to be a mantra of paramount importance, a syllable so drenched with idyllic fascination that it overflows within itself and lands in great self-serving droplets against my window but never ventures inside. I tried to lie still with my eyes closed but my brain hummed with thoughts of him to an unbearable degree. I tried to count sheep but they kept humping.   
  
*****  
  
Her hair fell against my neck, soft and shining, whispering something. I held her closer and took the opportunity to kiss her cheek gently, drawing back before exhaling her scent into the night. Cloudless and speckled with luminescent starlight, the waves forced glowing spray upward towards the moon, a rumbling challenge ignored by the occasional sea gull. I could swear that one force of nature or a whole host of them did not want us there. The sky was alive with writhing darkness, and the blurred horizon where it converged with the ocean completely drained of colour, of anything at all to differentiate them. A few years ago I might have been frightened by it.   
  
I was not quite past that stage of disbelief I am certain befalls us all, when the most beautiful being we have ever beheld is right here beside us, and will be the next morning. Unless we drowned, I mused, noticing that the sea was beginning to churn a little. I lay on my back on a heavy blanket, my right knee bent in readiness to leap into a fight, if such a situation should arise. My lover draped her arm across my chest, resting her blond head on my left shoulder. Her legs were long, perfectly formed and crossed at the ankles, ending some five inches before mine. I suppose my being taller made me feel more secure in my ability to protect her, although I know that she looked after herself in all the years before we met and I daresay she does now that we are apart.   
  
"You know something?"   
  
I barely heard the question, more the feeling she sent me, borne on a current of warm mist and all the cares I had in this world. None of it mattered.   
  
"What?"   
  
"I want to love you -", she began, not appearing to be at all pained by the weight of her words, "But you won't let me".  
  
*****  
  
Useless goddamn dreams. 


	9. Subterfuge

Reuben was still drifting between world after world of faceless apathy when I wandered into the lounge for an excuse to look at him. I leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded, watching his eyelids flutter in rhythm with his dreams, conceiving endless lines of poetry so captivating and poignant that I forgot them all. His chest rose and fell, made ever so slightly more perfect by at least three healed bullet wounds, long since buried in blistered calm. Not even Jenova could want him more than I, salient and deranged before the rising sun. Would that half of her that made Sephiroth make him the next, if she were still alive? That part of the hallowed harbinger that still takes breath may command no independent thought of its own, whatever remains is splintered, haggard and aggrieved by the loss of its remaining self. It might think after all and not give a flying fuck about humanity. Or it might want the revenge it rightfully deserves, if the convoluted justice rife in Midgar is to be believed.  
  
I tilted my head forward to catch the sound of hair sliding across the couch cushion as Reuben awakened slowly. Before he noticed me I slid into the kitchen, suddenly seeing the ramifications of my observing him sleep. Such behaviour would arouse even my reticent suspicion. And so it came to pass that, weary of his own exhaustion, my guest rolled off the couch and found the bathroom without my intervention.   
  
When at last I recognised the sounds, strangled screams cloaked in running water I did not respond immediately. Call it a general disrespect for human life. But respond I did and it was probably just as well. Zach's body lay sprawled awkwardly against the shower wall, leaning on the temperature slide and bringing water of increasingly unbearable heat onto his unconscious form. Pulling the shower door open with one hand I caught him with my free arm and dragged him, all steaming skin and taut muscle, onto the cool floor. He winced as all his weight landed on scalded flesh. The older wounds, covered yesterday in sterile dressings, gaped in virulent rage, contracted and purple with heat. No Mako had come to cleanse them. Despite my efforts I could no sooner sprout wings and fly than think of what to do next. Kill him now; end it? No, not like this, injured and robbed of the dignity such an act deserves. Fuck knows how long the phone had been ringing.  
  
"Sinclair?", a stressful voice barrelled down the receiver. I wiped my brow.  
  
"Hey Reeve, how's it hangin'?"  
  
"For fuck's sake, have you carried out your orders yet?", my orders stirred from the next room, raising themselves up on wet shoulders.  
  
"Uh, yeah, sure. I'm busy removing the evidence right now." There was a brief pause, the awkwardness of which I found utterly orgasmic.   
  
"That sounds like a lie, Sinclair." How uncharacteristic of either of us to be at all deceptive. I entertained a proverbial sweatdrop.  
  
"Really? Well, I learned from the best. And who knows when you're lying to me? After all, boss, you are the one who killed-"  
  
"That is not the point. The point is that the Knights of Neo-Midgar have called an urgent meeting. If you can't be here within the hour I shall have you shot."  
  
"Love you too, Reeve". I hung up the phone. Looks like I've only got fifty-nine minutes of freedom left today. Who the hell are the other Knights anyway? The title suggests an aura of austerity and thoughtless strength, not ex-Turks, or anyone the Shinra would have considered employing for that matter. All I know is that we are all trained killers, all genetically engineered and none are forthcoming with their identity. Time to go meet the team.   
  
  
  
My car smelled of him through the entire trip. With all avenues of escape from my apartment locked from the outside there was little chance of Reuben causing much damage. If he tried to rob me he wouldn't be able to get out. Nothing worth trashing or burning, my Electro-Mag rod secure in the glove box and my ID cards somewhere on my person; wherever I left them last time I sent this suit to be laundered. No Shinra employee will question the contents of a uniform before or after servicing it. It's more than their lives are worth not to replace whatever they find. Then again, Turks kill menial staff just for the fun of it. Target practice, not like we needed it. Rude and I could shoot so true when facing other at close range that our bullets would clash and rupture, landing as a single lump of charred lead.  
  
  
  
Shinra National Headquarters. Words can be so bitter, so synthetic, an unwanted presence to which I sometimes cannot lend solidity. They are no more forever than the structures they represent, the disgustingly opulent foyer with its potted palm trees, the genes of which all came from a Petri dish, and the columns of "marble", painstakingly painted onto limestone to save an immaterial amount of money when the fact that the Shinra own every mining colony in the world is taken into full and objective consideration. My first john met me here. He was a janitor, keeper of so many keys that we would always wind up in a room impossible to disturb, keys tied in a bunch to his belt that rattled like asthmatic birds when he thrust, nervously at first and then more assertively when I quit caring about the pain. I often wonder, now his body will never be found, why he only ever undid his fly rather than dropping his pants when he knew we were alone. And why he always carried four hundred gil when he knew I'd do it for three.  
  
***** 


	10. Strigoi Vii

The boardroom was as brutally spotless as ever, except for the few poisonous snowflakes that leaked haphazardly from an ashtray cut into the shape of the Shinra coat of arms and full to bursting with crushed stubs. The walls were panelled with hidden closets set in maple wood, and stylised paintings of the Shinra patriarchs. Perhaps being seen in that admirable light absolves them of everything they did to the contrary in life. If you are remembered, even in death you are not truly extinguished. There was a picture of Gast here, with his arm around a woman's waist. Ifalna, I think her name was. Hojo trashed it, of course. No-one to remember them, or likewise prolong their afterlife. I am amazed by the wealth of totally useless data I can't seem to obliterate from my memory. Ifalna's expression, for one. Trusting and fearful. Comfortable and yet somehow apprehensive. Gast told me I held that self same look in my eyes as a child.   
  
  
  
I wonder how many of these elite were born from the Professor's noble exploitation of nature, a dozen outcast souls haunt each face, and fingerprints not their own adorn the grips of all their weapons. Only four people may call themselves the Knights of Neo-Midgar, denizens and protectors of a city not yet built, a conceptual utopia under heavy guard even before its birth. The man is my height and of lithe build, a pair of Mideel-made sais holstered at his hips. The women are identical, behaving with calculated grace and unfathomable speed. If one made a movement, no matter how small, the other would complete it for her, silent and precise with no energy wasted. Both had ice-blond braids scraped tightly away from widow's peaks and ending somewhere around their knees, fine-boned faces showing no trace of their thoughts. Their weapons seemed to be each other, as much as the Remington Riot shotguns slung low across their backs. My EMR is invisible beneath my jacket, along with my beloved 1911.   
  
Four pairs of ardent Mako eyes within close proximity of each other is a dangerous proposition. A natural pair flickered for awhile in the doorway, alight with satisfaction in the knowledge that all who were conscripted had come. Reeve took his place as head of this strange gathering, bidding his audience sit also. I smiled, for myself alone, thinking idly that any one of us could end him in a second, but that the fight to the death between our unlikely quartet would not be so easily resolved. I knew Reeve well enough not to expect a greeting.  
  
"You are, at present, the only members of a highly classified order of assassins who have of late been assigned to dispose of those whom we consider a threat to our objective". He actually paused for breath. We looked at each other for a long second.  
  
"The Knights of Neo-Midgar", My commandant may not even know the meaning of his words, or where they could take us.   
  
"James Zoar. Reno Sinclair. Endorr and Elorath Coburg", our names passed over us like a death sentence, followed by Reeve's gaze, exempt from judgement if only in this room.  
  
"You were being honed for one purpose, and your efficiency in completing your missions has so far been commendable". I gave an amused snort and Zoar grinned. The twins turned away from me in remarkable unison, unwilling to be associated with my self-righteous dislike of authority. Reeve coughed politely, his eyes directing mine down. I immediately adopted a studious expression and sat as I had been taught at the Academy. The tip of his shoe was very close to my crotch.  
  
"As I was saying, you are all proficient killers, assets to our organisation. The assignment I shall give you here today is of the utmost confidentiality. Refuse it if you wish, but leave Midgar tonight and forget what you have heard. Those who accept this mission will be paid well enough never to work again, and of course, there is the matter of any answers you may be seeking."   
  
True silence is a rare phenomenon, and I was not about to break it, unwillingly rapt, begging the nothingness between myself and my superior to bleed the truth from him. He knows, he has to. He is old enough to have known Gast. The dreams, the unearthly glow in my eyes and my inhuman strength, gifts of military science. But their beginning, that thing, Jenova….  
  
"We have had reports of a being which is commanding humans to incite genocide, on a scale small enough to pass for mass murder. In short, ladies and gentlemen, an immensely powerful organism is killing people indiscriminately, using people as its slaves".  
  
Jenova. Jenov…Je.. I couldn't marshal my thoughts in the realm of anything like sanity for an immeasurably long time, and I was not alone in that respect. The Shinra, the most powerful organisation on this withered Planet, has confirmed for me what Zach said. Jenova is killing again, spurring its marionettes to murder from wherever it lies. It was as if I had opened a door to the something that makes schizophrenics shiver and children sleep with the lights on. When I shut my eyes I saw blood. Slowly, grating against my vehement pleas for it to end, the blood formed figures on the ground, licking up walls and spattered on discarded blades. There had to be thirty of them, if not more.   
  
"Your assignment, should you live long enough, is to find that being-", Reeve had virtually dismissed his former etiquette, now speaking hurriedly, urgently, his rakish form gesturing in punctuation and his skin visibly heated, "And bring it to the science division, in whatever condition you find it. If you take this mission, further details will be sent to you accordingly".   
  
He searched for his composure among the tattered scraps of decency that had fallen, cowering, to the floor when first he began to state his intent. The Coburgs paid myself and Zoar a passing glance before murmuring some form of agreement toward Reeve and leaving with as much décor and harmony as they had come. The three who stayed sat only long enough to realise we shouldn't. Voices from my dreams blew past my eyes on a decaying wind, spirited away by an evanescent glimpse of truth. All these voices, these intermittent bursts of salvation and hellfire, formed of the same source. You….all this time it has been….  
  
"I'll do it". 


	11. Synergy

I was glad Zoar nodded in agreement to my words, signed his soul away and paced out of the room in step with me. Without that living reminder of social conduct I would have slit myself to ribbons if only to shake this pulsing discomfort from my every sinew. I had to do something, anything, but all my mind could fixate on was the edge of a cliff shrouded in green vapour, falling every heartbeat and dragged back by snatched shards of stolen pleasantry between bustling crowds of staff and SOLDIER. I shook Zoar's hand and found it as slick with sweat as mine. We bade each other farewell, both knowing it meant nothing of the kind and drag raced out of the parking lot. I conceded him the victory if only because I was almost out of gas. That and his car has substantially more block than my MkIV, but nevertheless I stayed close enough to read his license plate, and hear the gurgling crack of his recently punctured manifold.  
  
  
  
After half a mile I was still tailing the azure Shinra Supra, and when Zoar indicated, I figured I had nothing to lose by following him. Our engines cooled, the cars' noses almost touching, on a deserted road overlooking a construction site below the plate. Somehow the constant whine of machinery and the resounding melody of diggers and forklifts did nothing to dispel the mood. The unknowable rivers of life and death floating up to meet Meteor, they killed more than the cosmic threat that Sephiroth summoned. They wiped out more than half of the capital, and I suppose we should have seen it coming. Midgar was thriving on evil, and when the civilians are allowed back in about twenty years I daresay it will be just as evil again. While the grating drone of industry swelled beneath our feet, Zoar and I talked about anything we cared to at the edge of the highway, above the nothing that was a city, someday long ago; one that refuses to be forgotten by all but its fathers, who sleep eternally with their creation, trapped by its fallen catafalque. The power plants are nothing but heaps of rust and rubble, husks of a squandered fortune. It always reminded me of a half-dissected human, alive and struggling on a cold table, in front of Rude.   
  
We looked to each ruin in turn, then behind us at the hollowed centre of this great city, a swarming stab wound in the Cetra dreamland, and then to each other. His eyes glowed in the soft, stifling twilight, proclaiming to no-one that he was their nemesis, their something else, something he himself may not understand and yet of which he had the right to be proud. The Knights are, for all intents and purposes, untouchable to all but each other, a mutation daring and beautiful, and fuck anyone who disagrees simply because they cannot understand. Are we not that tide of unwavering aseity this Planet has not seen since the crisis from the sky butchered their last? Are we not the new Ancients? I had run out of questions now, ready to drown in Zoar's eyes if only because I knew I would not die.   
  
I did it slowly enough that he would know what I was planning, and gently enough for him to stop me. He did not resist the kiss. Nor did he resist my hand finding a place to rest in the small of his back and drawing him closer. We did not fit together as ideally as was possible, but it didn't matter, the meeting of our lips alone sufficient to rouse a few involuntary, irresistible moans from Zoar. He must have done this before; he must have received another man, the way he so easily slid into submission against the door of my Spitfire. I let it get a little rougher before moving my hand lower, and granted his tongue what it wanted. How cruel of me to conquer him without letting him at least taste dominance.   
  
I thought later, after I had filled James Zoar with enough force to send him hurtling over the edge of orgasm and held him until it was over, after I had made some attempt to wipe his semen from the window, that I had probably called him Zach when I came. 


	12. Primo Bacio

There was nothing more to say, and very little we hadn't already done to each other. Zoar left in his car and I in mine. Before long we would have to see each other again. As always, the afterglow is washed away by viscous acidity, my own regret, as battered and half-forgotten as it is, flooded my mind with its nonpareil familiarity, a stunning spectre of twisted wreckage that can only be trodden down so far. Why am I like this? Why can I just fuck men and then forget about them? I guess I'm grateful, and I have bigger shit to worry about most of the time. Like now, for example. If I had to single out one of the spectacular fuck-ups that form the milestones of my life as being a defining moment I'd have to say the day Lain left. I was a Turk then, so it can't have been about money. And she was a whore as well, which puts morality pretty far out of the equation. That's how we met, actually. One of her regulars woke up bi one morning. That prick had more money that sense. Quite like Reeve in fact. I guess sex had been all Zoar and I had expected of each other, and it would always be that way, nothing but the animalistic beauty of the act itself, unspoiled by conversation or intimacy.  
  
I have never fallen in love with anyone and I hope I never do. I adored Lain, I worshipped her, and I guess that's different. More intense, which invariably means more short-lived. On the way back to my apartment I stuck some gas in the Spitfire, and wondered if people who own these 24-hour stores are even people at all. There's so many of them here, even more since the heart of the city collapsed, and all they do is sell. Do they eat, or sleep, or fuck? Doubtful. I always figured as a kid that when I had money I'd just be happy. The theory itself is flawless; earn money, buy weapons to get through life, buy dream car to get around it….the usual shit. And in the end, who really gives a rat's ass if the next person is happy? The only way we can define how we feel is by the effect it has on everyone else. In that vein, my houseguest ought to be pretty pissed at me by now for putting him on lockdown. Turning the key in its slot halfway down the door of apartment 209, I thought that if Zach questioned my methods, I would tell him that it was only because I don't trust him.   
  
  
  
I was surprised to find the furniture all intact and not even the dust disturbed. Zach was standing by the fireplace, his arms crossed and mind fixed on the painting that hung there. He must have dug the black wife beater he was wearing out of the sack of special-issues the company deliver every week. The Shinra logo bag appears on the doorstep every Sunday morning, which means in itself that I am never awake to greet it, and I suppose I have merely forgotten to be unnerved at the delivery of identical clothes from nowhere. I was tired, confused and I stank of sex and midnight, but I still couldn't help noticing how incredible Zach looked. As if it would not complicate things, I ran a hand through my hair and coughed.  
  
"It came with the apartment".   
  
The painting was a copy, tastefully brutal but still provocative. There's someone else I ought to hunt down - whoever decorated the apartment. Some low-level Shinra devotees, but why would they hang a firing squad in the lounge?   
  
"Oh. Fascinating, isn't it?", he asked, looking for all intents and purposes quite healthy, his eyes so bewitching under the weight of grief. If he wanted to talk more, then he would have to wait.  
  
"Yeah. 'Would have gone for a clock myself, but hey. Listen, I've gotta take a shower. We'll talk about all everything later."  
  
Zach made a noncommittal noise and returned to studying the grim scene before him. I paused, as if I could think of something worth saying or doing. Failing that, I left in silence.   
  
As I washed away the last drops of lust and heady indulgence from only an hour past, I felt something familiar, amphibian and alive. Not quite disgust at myself, but close to it. Whenever a feeling such as this came upon me in the past I would call it foreign, but it has been with me since I split the walls of my growth tank and ran from Mount Nibel. Sometimes, from an angle I could never have seen, I can make out two children at the base of a shallow slope. One is wearing a blue dress. I think she is dead, but there above her crouches a blond boy, willing her to awaken. He paces and cries and calls her name, until more come and carry her away. She looks too strong to die with him watching, and it strikes me that she views her life as hers alone; and when it must end it will be by her own hand.   
  
I let my hair loose and shook away the scene, the wet tendrils clawing at my waist reminding me of the man who told me I would become an adept in the arts of death. His eyes haunt me still, Mako gemstones alight with all he knew, with how far ahead of the world he always was. Those iridescent, impenetrable eyes....I couldn't tell how old he was then, or when he died, moreover I thought him to be entirely beyond the confines of aging, above the hourglass of bone and mortar, something alien and true. Not unlike the Knights, the Ancients and all who have gone before. With only a suggestion from his unnatural, spectacular emerald eyes he could make anyone he chose fall for him heavily, hopelessly. I suppose I interested him if only because he could not enchant me as easily as all the others. As a much younger version of myself I decided beneath the stars that no man would claim my heart, and now it is so long ago I'm not sure if my reticence irritated or amused Sephiroth.   
  
Whatever effect it had, he strode into my room one night, having no need of stealth, and sat at the edge of my bed, so sickeningly real and material when in contact with solid things. It was a combination of arrogance and quizzical naivety as to my resistance that played within his smile. He was still everything they said he was, but as I know now, he was just a man when his hand stroked my shoulder blades, when he remarked how alike our eyes were, and when he drew my face near enough to his own for me to feel his breath against my skin. Yes, he breathed, the hero of so many unrequited legends, his heart beat rapidly, rhythmically, he ate and drank and smoked like all of us. What made him so unique, I think, was the amount of Mako that intoxicated his every impulse and expression, and whatever natural impurity allowed him to survive that volume of infusion.   
  
The water stopped falling and I stepped out into the world again, dressing for a long evening of searching for answers in dead languages, questions and contrivance. Sephiroth seemed to be behind me; I could feel soft exhaled steam on my neck, and words that cannot be spoken aloud for fear of butchering all that they could come to mean. It comes and I admit to it, the sight of him stooping gently and taking my face in one gloved hand, casting down a spent cigarette and not clearing his throat for me, letting his lips stay on mine. When we kissed fully it was so strangely beautiful that I can't rely on what I remember of it, only on what blotted masterpieces I saw behind my eyes. Fire, ice, blood and warm deliverance, infuriatingly far away, shrouded in skin and stitches. I breathed out his smoke and saw an unknown future curl into the dying light; stripped bare of credibility and fettered to the silence that keeps it....caught....  
  
"You're back?"  
  
Zach asked me this as though it were ordinary and forgettable, his eyes darting in sync with the towel in my hand as I made some vague attempt to dry my hair and decipher his question as if the time I was given for both tasks was nearly run dry.   
  
"What?"  
  
Well, so much for an informed response.  
  
"You were....in the past, I think". 


	13. Il Bacio Ultima

The past is a difficult entity to describe. There, in all of us, with a few exceptions in an innumerable many, lies a magnificent, dormant slideshow of all we have seen, heard, felt... And if, as everyone's past is connected through the Lifestream, the way everyone believes but none will admit, then it is no more real than a dream, sadly. I think that Sephiroth in particular sought that power for himself to see his past from another perspective, not to resolve it, such a thing is impossible, but only to better understand it. Bleeding there, in that cold and glowing hollow, trying with the last of his strength to understand, nothing more….the thought often comes to me that such beauty flooded into his soul, being as it is ancient and infinitely more potent than humanity can conceive; it was too great for him to bear or abandon, and he died willingly, unable to face anything else after what he had been shown.   
  
"Come on, I'm gonna show you something".   
  
  
  
I slipped my bare feet into a pair of boots that, due to some benevolent cosmic mistake, actually did match. Reasonably. I wasn't sure if I would ever show him the place I was leading him into, cordoned off with yellow tape, bones and sandblasted debris, invisible unless you truly know the way. I parked the Spitfire at least five hundred yards away from our destination, time enough in that many footsteps to kill whoever might be following. Of course, no-one was. Thankfully no-one comes here now. And nothing but memories and the smell of brutally scrubbed bloodstains would be waiting for them.   
  
  
  
Yuffie beat her tail against the rear side window, grateful for the cold night air. She never got much more exercise than that accident of nature named Palmer, less still since Project Emanuel turned me into a pencil-pushing revenant. Poor fucker, she's always so happy to see me. That's probably the only time I'll ever say that about a female of any species. I sent a tired smile back at her and bid Zach walk with me, crushing metal and bits of smashed masonry and nondescript Materia underfoot; leaving in our wake tiny threads of light flowing upwards, released from their glassy manacles. Romantic, in any other situation. The grave is hidden behind a pile of skeletal old cars, the headstone a tumbling monolith in starlit marble, cracks crawling like prayers toward the silent sky, disfigured hands unequalled in their desolate piety.  
  
  
  
I walked Zach past it. I didn't want to see it myself. I'm beyond the belief that I brought him here to kill him in private. At the moment he is more of an asset alive. And those who are not are unlikely to betray the confidences they hear this night. My pace slowed, my pulse a defensive grind against my temples. Someone who has not seen it, ought not to be able to. Such is the beauty of indifference, of hiding from the world a wonder it could not appreciate. I caught sight of a broken spire and a few stray slates through the perpetual fog of pollution and the burning whatever-you-can-find-to-keep-warm. No more stained glass. And certainly, no longer a priestess to watch over it.  
  
"What is this place?"  
  
I wasn't as surprised as perhaps I should have been that Zach saw the dying edifice before I pointed it out to him. What surprised me, sufficient only to amuse me for now, was that he did not recognise it.   
  
"You mean she never brought you here?"  
  
Replying to a question with another is seldom the route to a man's heart. Hell, I never asked that he fall in love with me, only that he answer me. Who did what to him. I was already pretty sure of why.  
  
"Never", he breathed, marvelling at the sight of Aeris' small, sacrosanct retreat from the rotten cacophony of Planet voices who whispered to her of their foretold death, and her own to sate their hunger.   
  
It took ten minutes to climb within reach of the door, and the same again to open it. Rainwater. Oak bolts. Freezing and expansion. Colossal pain in the ass.   
  
Brushing slivers of filthy ice from my clothes I pushed free the final obstruction and gestured that Zach enter the now gaping doorway. For less than a second, a pre-recorded farce flashed across my field of vision. A man, in more pain than a person should ever know, pulled from the collapsed bastion of his capital city by his lover's bleeding hands. This church, and the light that spilled in through the decrepit roof. Here, on the soft soil of Aeris' flowerbed, I laid Rufus down carefully, for fear that the soil was not soft enough after all, and whispered in his ear that I would never, ever forget him. His eyes revolved in their sockets, pleading for an anchor to this world, but for all his lifetime's cruelty, who was he to ask the harbingers for mercy? My Rufus. It was not love, but it was the closest I've ever come, and it scared me so goddamn much I never let it blossom. It could have been love. And now it is over, I will never know. 


	14. Consummation

I did not want in the least to disconnect from the only pictures of Rufus I have left, and if it cost me my life well, fuck it, my life wasn't going anywhere anyway. I realised that my companion was looking at me, and probably had been for a while. I smiled absently, wondering whether I would miss Rufus as much if I were not so viscerally reminded of him. Zach…I brought you here to talk to you, and now I'm not even sure if I can still breathe.

"You loved him," Zach's brow creased, his words a source of considerable pain, "I wonder if I could - love like that."

My eyes bled their apology, swallowing salt water before it could fall. Without even trying I manage to draw everyone around me into my mounting pile of fuck-ups. I doubt I will care in the morning. But the morning is a long way away.

It happened with such subtlety and with such perfect order to it that I really ought to have seen it coming, Zach's right hand drawing closer to rest lightly on the side of my face. I can't remember the last time I cared enough to shave, the last time I could actually make myself look in the mirror. He looked into my eyes and I into his. I saw….adoration, total surrender. I almost choked on my guilt, and that sense of self-importance that comes from being in this situation with one who behaves so earnestly and with such passion that they must be inexperienced.

I wrapped my hand around his wrist and turned it to plant a feather-light kiss on his palm, my eyes lowered. I swear I saw the capillaries in his fingers all stand to attention, blood rushing around his body in envious arousal. He pulled me closer, knowing what he wanted. I submitted, wanting this time, his first time, to be his own, to be complete. We stood no more than an inch apart, breathing in each other's breath, tasting that sweet apprehension that made me shudder, growing ever more painfully hard. Zach unbuttoned my shirt, removing it in a graceful sweep and holding it to his face for a half second, breathing my scent in as deeply as he could. I tried to speak; it took a while for me to remember how,

"You know….what will happen?"

He smiled, the most innocent and utterly beautiful smile I have seen for years. Rufus never smiled. I feel as though I betray him, but now the shell is broken, don't you see, Rufus? Now there is no more pretence, no more lies. I returned the favour to him, letting his shirt drop to the ground and watching a fine gauntlet of dust glitter and spin only to settle again. It might have never happened. Just like our lives, when the answers are finally found. I ran a fine line of kisses from his collarbone to his navel, timing them so as to coincide with the rapid rise and fall of his chest, reserving the most passionate kiss fora swollenbullet-wound scar on his abdomen. I felt him so clearly then we might have been one person, one soul. I felt a flash of pride and a surge of pleasure, bruised and broken seraphim whispering his name.

We undressed each other rather more slowly than either of us could stand, and soon we were locked together in a fierce kiss against the cold wooden altar, bare of all adornment save for shreds of crimson cloth. Perfect. I stepped up and onto it and beckoned that Zach follow. I looked deep into his eyes and wished that he knew how much I wanted him, how at that very second I loved him more than life itself. He lay on his back and, in one lithe gesture rested his heels on my shoulders.

I kissed him again and again, my eyes unwavering and hoping against hope that he would relax, that I would not hurt him. I held my breath and prayed. It was indescribable, it was me and everything I've ever been, buried and euphoric, swelling to meet the surface and the touch of his skin. He was every lover I've ever had, he was the answer to all my unconscionable needs and absolute panacea. It tore me apart to open my eyes, to discard all the magnificence I saw making slow revolutions of the inside of my head, but I had to watch him; to watch his exquisite muscles contract as his breathing was reduced to a slow shudder, to the whispers of omniscient submission. I squeezed my eyes shut again, as tightly as I could, and held my breath, knowing thatanother second of thismight be more than I could take.

I called his name, and he was choking on mine, on the grinding enormity of the brink of release. I felt a pulsing, glowing light; I know it's impossible but I did - I saw him, naked, beautiful, smiling, inside my head. And radiating from him in a glorious starburst was the most transcendental, perfect light. I nodded, smiling myself, and the light washed over me, into me, forcing my tensed and thrusting muscles to relax, to quiver as waves of viscous warmth dragged the light to every corner of my soul. It was above orgasm; it was more, it was spiritual and complete and made the simple consequence of _coming_ so distant, so mundane and redundant. I had seen so much, and yet all I could see now was my own mind liquefying into a post-climactic stupor.

He reached for me and I embraced him, leaning my weight against his chest and the warm pool of semen on his stomach as I withdrew, totally spent. Zach turned onto his side and I held him so tightly and so close I was surprised that he didn't cry out with the pain of it, of being crushed against me for that moment before the fatigue made me slacken my grip. He nestled his head against my throat and wrapped the tattered altar cloth around us both. I was asleep almost immediately, and I did not dream.


End file.
